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I’ve seen a great deal of literature in the last year or two about the way that financial services industries are developing across the African continent. To really investigate this, look no further than Kenya, where mobile payments are easier than in Pittsburgh or Los Angeles and the leader in this market is M-Pesa (Swahili for mobile money).

96 percent of homes across Kenya us M-Pesa according to a recent report in CNET. That is the kind of market domination that Google Wallet and Apple Pay can only dream of and it is happening in a market that never really had traditional banking.

This all has had me thinking. This is one of those cases where necessity leads to the birth of innovation. It also means that companies like Apple and Google have a lot that they can learn from what M-Pesa is doing.

According to a report in Business Insider, mobile payments will make up $6.3 trillion of the payments that take place in China by the year 2020. Much like in Kenya, China didn’t develop the same kind of banking system that Europe and North America have, so they are for the most part also going through a similar LeapFrog.

This still leaves the existing banking infrastructure in China hurting. The state owned UnionPay loses out on the fees when mobile payment is used. The Financial Times in an article in August described this well.

UnionPay, along with issuing banks and acquiring banks, is hemorrhaging income from merchant fees. The trend is fueled not only by the rise of ecommerce but also by the dramatic increase of mobile payments to offline merchants such as supermarkets and restaurants.

Mobile wallet leaders like Alibaba and Tencent are dominant players in this space, while traditional banks are starting to try to get into the action. I’m truly interested to see how this will play out in the long-term, but one thing is for certain.

These companies are being faced with the challenge of minimizing elicit transactions while also growing a global network of users and agents involved in their transactions. To become an acceptable option in places like the United States, they will have to show their willingness to crackdown on those using their service for illegal services while also making sure their customers feel a sense of privacy.

One of the concerns growing out of the M-Pesa phenomenon is a fear that the platform will be used for money laundering (sound familiar to arguments against BitCoin?). In a US State Department report on International Narcotics Control Strategy, M-Pesa and the potential for money-laundering listed in the section about Kenya.

Mobile payment companies like M-Pesa, Alibaba, and Tencent are entering an era where staying afloat will be truly a balance acting. Only the most innovative companies will be able to continue adding value to the experience of their customers while also remaining a trustworthy firm.

Media coverage of the blockchain is starting to pick up recently, so I thought it was important to gain a better understanding. On its most basic level, blockchain is a database that creates records for its transactions automatically. If you know anything about cryptocurrency (BitCoin for example), you have been part of one of the major users of the blockchain.

It seems like our future could be bound up in how effective this system is. As an example outside of what you might think about with BitCoin, Walmart announced a trial using blockchain to track to manage food safety. They know how dangerous problems with food, whether it is fresh, prepared, or otherwise.

In recent years, recalls of food due to contamination with listeria, e-coli, and salmonella have dominated the headlines. Look no further than the problems that have plagued Chipotle. While I’m sure they never intended to harm their customers, Chipotle has seen their stock value plummet from a high of nearly $750 per share to as low as $370 per share (on Friday, it closed at $416/share).

Chipotle could have avoided seeing its market cap cut nearly in half had this technology been available to more quickly ascertain the source of its food safety problems. To be fair, some of these problems may be linked to food prep, which this technology might not be able to fix unless the system included the transaction of who is cooking what at each period of time as well as who assembles each burrito, bowl, or salad.

Beyond this, time will tell what kind of value to the economy blockchain could eventually have in self driving cars, healthcare, identity verification and of course finance. I’m excited to see what the world with blockchain will mean, but until then, I’ll just be watching to see who succeeds implementing it.

While I think that HP is headed in the right direction now thanks to new leadership, not that long ago, I felt like the company had lost its way. This is an essay explaining my thoughts that I wrote while I was a student at the Katz School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh:

The year was 1939 and out of a rented garage, Bill Hewlett and David Packard formed a partnership under the name Hewlett Packard. From these humble beginnings came a company that in 2013 had assets of over $100 billion. Hewlett Packard was developed with an idea of how things should be done called the HP Way. This ethic is described in length in David Packard’s 1995 book of the same title. The goal of this paper is to investigate the HP Way and the culture it created at HP. Additionally, this paper will look at how HP has changed through mergers, acquisitions, and spinoffs and their impact on adherence to the HP Way as a part of their corporate culture.

Since HP’s founding in 1939, the Palo Alto based company has gone through a great deal of growth and change. During WWII and leading into the 1950s and 1960s, the company experienced some of its most rapid growth. In an effort to allow decision-making to occur at the lowest possible level while the company grew, David and Bill developed seven objectives, which they published. The objectives are the core of the HP Way: profit, customers, field of interest, growth, employees, organization, and citizenship. Each of these objectives was picked for a very particular reason as described below.

Profit was picked at the first objective, because it could be used as a measure of both success and societal contributions of the company. The goal according to David was to create products that are both useful and worthwhile. Beyond this, profit is more than just dollars and cents, but that the dollars and cents are important to make everything happen at the company.

Customers are listed next, because they are who the products are being made for. This value wasn’t about traditional customer service, but about making truly quality products and continuously improving them. This was pretty forward thinking for the time in terms of product innovation.

Field of interest is the third value described, which is about the company being able to expand into new markets.. The idea is that HP should be a part of markets where I can make a positive contribution and already had the talent to succeed. This is a reinforcement of some of the ideology described in the first objective. David is careful to describe markets where the company already has capabilities. “We always asked, “How can we make a contribution based on our strengths and our knowledge?” Then we’d ask, “Who needs it?” (Packard, 124)

Growth is the fourth objective of the HP Way. This is value more quantitative, but measurable in a similar way to profit. While some of the other objectives describe specifics to growth, this concept was more focused on financial health of the company. The company’s goal was also to self-finance projects rather than take on long-term debt. David explains, “Our long-standing policy has been to reinvest most of our profits and to depend on this reinvestment, plus funds from employee stock purchases and other cash flow items, to finance our growth.” (Packard 113)

The fifth objective was about HP’s employees. The goal was to provide a well-rounded job with good compensation, shared success (profit sharing), job security, and regular performance evaluation. The goal of this objective was to recruit and retain the best and brightest employees for HP and make sure they feel both happy and satisfied with the work they are doing.

The sixth objective is related to a more macro view of the organization. The objective is, “To maintain an organizational environment that fosters individual motivation, initiative and creativity, and a wide latitude of freedom in working toward established objectives and goals.” (Packard, 110) These values get to the entrepreneurial spirit of HP. Freethinking and creativity helps the best ideas reach the top and allow HP to innovate smarter.

The seventh and final objective is citizenship. This isn’t citizenship like being a US citizen, but rather about being a good corporate citizen. Doing this is about being a member of a community and not just a company. It is also about embedding yourself in the institutions of your area, whether that means running for office, volunteering, or anything else. It is also about helping those that helped you.

David Packard and Bill Hewlett truly believed in these values and described them by saying, “We have a set of values — deeply held beliefs that guide us in meeting our objectives, in working with one another, and in dealing with customers, shareholders, and others. ” (Packard, 110) These are the guides that HP holds itself to, or at least aims to. The values were influenced by people outside of HP going back to David and Bill’s time at Stanford.

Of those outside of HP that influenced the culture, Stanford professor Dr. Fred Terman was likely the greatest contributor. An argument can be made that without Terman, there would be no HP. David credits Dr. Terman with encouraging him to learn about electronics, “It was Fred who sparked my interest in electronics and who later encouraged and helped Bill Hewlett and me go into business for ourselves. His interest and faith in our abilities, even at our young age and in the midst of the Great Depression, gave us confidence and helped set a course for us.” (Packard, 30) Terman helped provide both David and Bill with resources in the community. Terman is even described by some as the father of Silicon Valley.

Terman’s lessons outside of the classroom helped the pair to understand that competitors in the industry could work together to create new standards. Terman introduced the pair to Charlie Litton, whose shop gave birth to some of the first HP instruments. Charlie’s willingness to allow young engineers like Bill and David use his shop in the early days inspired Bill and David to keep space for HP employees to tinker and invent. Later on Bill and David would pay back Charlie by allowing his employees to use their shop after a fire in Charlie’s shop.

Through all of the things described above, David and Bill hoped to make HP a company where decisions could be made swiftly and effectively at the lowest possible level with the same HP values considered each time. These standards could be a measuring stick for transactional and strategic decision making. Early on at the company while Bill and David were around, it seemed to work.

To see some of the innovation that came to HP, look no further than the development of light emitting diodes. HP’s values, led to innovation in fields where the company thought it could make a difference and improve the lives of its customers. Without knowing where this technology would advance, HP developed an essential element of successful future products including the pocket calculator. Further innovation by HP includes work in the printing industry. The development of inkjet and laserjet printers that could be used by both businesses and consumers may be the most disruptive innovation in the company’s history.

Fast-forward to the HP of 2014 and the company seems to be lost. The company doesn’t seem to follow the HP Way the ways it had in the past that led to such great success, but it didn’t happen over night. While the size of HP had some part of changing the company, mergers, acquisitions, and spinoffs played a major role in changing the culture at HP.

Look no further than the year 1999 as the first clue of these changes. Hewlett Packard decided to focus on its core products and spun-off the company’s original business. Agilent Technologies was the spinoff created from the original core products of HP. Included in this portfolio were testing and measuring equipment and medical devices. While hindsight is 20–20, having a relationship with hospitals and doctors through their medical devices would have allowed more innovation with the current core products.

Along the same lines of the Agilent spinoff, the acquisition of Compaq was a culprit in the changing culture of HP. Unlike HP, who had more diverse product offerings at the time of the acquisition, Compaq was singularly focused on the personal computers. Despite warnings from shareholders and colleagues alike, HP CEO Carly Fiorina pushed through the acquisition of Compaq in late 2001. (Gaughan, 493) The acquisition wasn’t made with the objectives set forth in the HP Way, so the kind of growth expected wasn’t reached. HP forced itself into a bigger battle in the PC market rather than carefully targeting strategy to more profitable areas of their company like printers. Bill Hewlett was likely rolling in his grave when he learned of this acquisition. Bill’s quote about not attacking strong existing businesses applies to this situation well, “Don’t try to take a fortified hill, especially if they army on top is bigger than your own.” (Packard, 130) For decisions like these and because of HP’s performance, Fiorina was forced out of office and replaced Mark Hurd.

In 2005, HP showed that they had stopped trusting their employees the way that David and Bill would have wanted under the HP Way. HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn launched an internal investigation to get to the root of leaks of information that could have only come from director level to major news sources like the NY Times. The now former chair hired a private investigation firm that used illegal means to try to obtain this information. The paranoia and lack of trust at the highest levels of HP in 2005 showed how far the company had gotten away from its original values.

Despite the no hire to fire policy of the HP Way, HP had major layoffs in 2012. The company cut somewhere between 25,000 to 30,000 jobs while trying to slim down for this move. In reference to this, the Wall Street Journal, discuses a slimmer HP. The authors allude to HP’s inability to say fresh and innovative, “HP has been slower than most other corporate-technology sellers in pushing into emerging areas such as cloud computing, mobile technology and services to help organizations modernize.” (Ovide and King) Cutting jobs isn’t the way to make HP more innovative or to create trust among employees. The way that HP laid off employees is not the HP Way.

Just a few weeks ago, HP just announced plans to split the company into two separate publicly traded companies. The proposed split would create one company that sells corporate hardware and business services, which will be called HP Enterprises and another company selling PCs and printers, which will be called HP Inc. Each of the new companies will be publically traded. While the change is being made to help the company compete, this is not the HP Way. This adds little value to customers. This looks more like a hail-mary pass to save a company that hasn’t innovated enough and that is facing mounting shareholder pressure to make money today. HP is a PC company that hasn’t learned how to adjust to a world where people aren’t buying PCs like they used to. HP’s 2013 10-K shows that company seem to understand this, but has shown little ability to fix the problem. The 10-K describes in its first risk factor (1A) the need to address business challenges. In this section, the 10-K talks about how the market is dynamically shifting towards tablets and more portable computing devices and that there is a need to move the company to better serve this audience. (17 of HP 10-K) “Personal Systems net revenue decreased 10.2% (decreased 9.0% on a constant currency basis) in fiscal 2013. The Personal Systems business continues to experience significant challenges due to the overall PC market contraction as a result of a customer shift, particularly consumers, to tablet products.” (59 of HP 10-K)

HP also lost its place as the leader in PC shipping to Chinese competitor Lenovo. (Lublin, Mattioli, and Cimulluca) The company’s current attempt at the tablet market, the HP Slate was not well received by the market. The CNET review for the 2013 shows that HP is lost in the tablet market in part due to the way it has stopped following the HP Way and instead is racing to the bottom in some cases. The review concludes that the low price of the device doesn’t make up for the important features the tablet is lacking as well as a less than impressive touch screen. (HP Slate 7 Review) The HP Way would have told HP to create something a premium product with features that add things that people want, but instead, they are creating what already exists in the market, an inexpensive tablet with extremely limited features. This is something that Bill and David would never have allowed.

HP is on a path that neither David Packard nor Bill Hewlett could have imagined or be proud of. HP has spent the last five to ten years underwhelming consumers to meet the short-term demands of shareholders. The HP Way says no to this kind of behavior and would have created strategic long-term plans that consider profit, but also give a path for the company to follow forward that is sustainable. While it is unclear if the split up of HP into HP Inc and HP Enterprise is the kind of change that could save the company, time will only tell if one of the original Silicon Valley firms will live on. Maybe it is time for a look back at the HP Way.

I think that the IPO for Snap is one of the most interesting in the social media marketplace. SnapChat is this strange social media service that is personal, but also not. It is about sharing, but not forever. It doesn’t necessarily seem like they know where they are going to make money quite yet. This morning, Snap was trading at around $24/share and at the time I published this story, Snap was trading at $25.24.

Much like a few social media companies that came before them (I’m looking at you MySpace), SnapChat has some business in hardware too. Snap’s Spectacles are an attempt at what Google tried with Google Glass, but in a very simplified way. Snap Spectacles come in at just $129.99 (Google Glass was more than $1,000 despite the fact it was basically still in Beta) and in 3 colors (Coral, teal, and black)

Snap Spectacles are basically just sunglasses that can take 10 seconds of video for your SnapChat account and wirelessly add the video to your snaps and SnapChat memories. Obviously, this is much less feature rich than Google Glass, but simple enough to use for mass market appeal.

I hope Snap figures it all out, because I think the company has an interesting way of communicating, but I don’t know what the roadmap ahead looks like.

I went for a trip to Atlanta recently and was listening to music on my phone while I was working from my company’s Atlanta office and the song Heroes by David Bowie came on. For those of you who don’t know, this song has had a somewhat recent surge in popularity due to it being included in two key scenes in the film “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”.

In the film, the main characters listen to the song while riding in a pickup truck through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, which takes you from south of the city straight to the Fort Pitt Bridge with an incredibly view of the City of Pittsburgh. Every time I hear the song, I am reminded of the experience of riding through the tunnel myself. Hearing it away from the city made me realize that Pittsburgh is really home now. It has been about a year and I don’t know everything about this city, but it is certainly home now.

What are my new goals for Pittsburgh? I want to explore more. I’ve got a list of things still to do in Pittsburgh seem to be key to really experiencing the city. I’ll List them below and have crossed out the ones I’ve already done. If you have suggestions of true “Yinzer” things to do other than drink an IC Light, drop me a comment and maybe I’ll add it. I know my list is a bit incomplete. My list isn’t in any particular order.

Go to The Warhol Museum

Go to the Mattress Factory

Go to Phipps Conservatory

Heinz History Center

Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Carnegie Museum of Art

Carnegie Science Center

Go to the Pittsburgh Symphony (Heinz Hall)

Go to a Pirates Game

Go to a Steelers Game

Go to a Penguins Game

Go to a Pitt basketball game

Eat breakfast at De Lucas

Eat breakfast at Pamela’s

Go to Primanti’s

Go to Burgatory

Drinks at the Cage (Squirrel Hill Cafe)

Get a hot dog at the O in Oakland

Have dinner on top of Mt Washington

Cathedral of Learning (go to top floor elevator goes and explore bottom floor)

Just to preface this blog, I wrote this more as a piece that I’d like to hear on radio. I drew inspiration for this from some of my favorite radio stories, though to be honest, it is not really like any of them. I don’t have a good enough microphone to try to do that justice, so instead you will get the text version of this. I invite you to read it in my voice if you know what that sounds like or anyone else’s for that matter and think about what this might mean to you.

My Life as a Soundtrack

I decided recently that my life needs a soundtrack. One day I want to be followed around by the ghosts of Glenn Miller’s band, playing as I perform the average tasks of a twenty-two year old living at home with my parents.

I want to watch Frank Sinatra looking puzzled as he tries to come up with the right words to describe me as I stare at the different packages of romaine hearts, looking for the right one for my lunches for the week.

I imagine the bands of my soundtrack would have a bit more fun with it watching me cook. They’d see me standing by the kitchen countertop mixing together a salad dressing and drowning out the sound of my bickering at the television. I really hope it’s Louis Armstong’s trumpet drowning that out.

I have to hope that Rod Stewart would make an entrance into my life soundtrack. Hopefully he’d come by to give the perfect background sound to turn parts of my life into the chick flick I imagine his songs could create. Who knows, he might be able to improve my luck in that category.

There are a few songs I’d like to make sure are not in this soundtrack of my life if I can be so bold. Do you think we could avoid playing the theme to Jaws in my life? I like all of my limbs and unless I hear the theme at Universal Studios, I can’t imagine anything good could be happening if I hear that song.

I’d like to avoid any song by Nickelback and Avril Lavigne, as I believe this could be a sign of an awkward turn of events in which I end up at Avril and Chad’s wedding (I had to look up his name, I promise). Maybe we could avoid anything with a deadly theme like James Bond or Star Wars. Like I said before, I like my limbs and don’t like my chances in either of those situations.

My music should send me traveling around the world. I want to hear the words of Matisyahu’s Jerusalem as I walk through the Old City and chow down on some schwarma or some schnitzel. I’ll somehow find myself face to face with Benjamin Netanyahu discussing foreign policy, which I know less about personally than I do about the books of the bible that come after the Fives Books of Moses.

With a glass of Havana Club and Tu Kola in one hand, I want to hear Frank Delgado singing Loco Por Ti. Hopefully, when this song is playing, I am starring into the eyes of some lucky girl’s eyes (okay, let’s be real, I’ll be the lucky one) and find myself surrounded by the whole Cuban gang. There is no question that Ariel will be ripping up the dance floor by the time Qva Libre comes up to play Buena Suerte and I’ll be just trying to keep up with him.

I fear one day I’ll hear tunes reminiscent of the ones that played Steve Job’s funeral in my soundtrack. It will signal the death of someone important and recovery will take a long time. I will sit around and ask myself why I wanted a soundtrack in the first place. I will give John Williams the stink eye for standing behind me while I try to wipe my eyes off. He just wanted to offer me a tissue, but I would have no part of that, because I will have told him it was just allergies.

At some point, maybe I will hear the national anthem of this great nation and serve my country in elected office. I will find serving in office to be a constant struggle, yet a joy at the same time. I’ll hear something like Bach’s Cello Suites or something that equally academic. I’m hoping maybe I’ll Also Hear Fanfare for the Common Man, because that would just be cool. It will be a truly special part of my life.

My hope is that this lifetime soundtrack consists of more highs than lows along the way. It is filled with more memories than I would bother you with. I’m so early in the soundtrack that few of the musicians have even been chosen. There is plenty of noise on the outside that can serve as distractions along the way, but I know that it will all be special.

A couple weeks ago I made an announcement to Colleagues in the Student Government Association about efforts to change our campus community. This announcement was the beginning of a conversation with the student body about the issues that matter, issues that impact students every day. It was on that first day I reminded my colleagues something simple yet important: We Are Limitless. We Are Limitless is a conversation about how together as a student body we are strong enough to change our campus, city, state, country, and world. I believe in the ability of our student body to change things, to create positive change and am encouraged by what I see every day. It wasn’t long ago that I learned that it is important to have a healthy disregard for the impossible.

The first part of this conversation is about transportation. Today, we live in a city that is neither bicycle nor skateboard friendly. Our city has incredibly limiting skateboarding ordinances and lacks the necessary bicycle lanes to support the growing cycling community. Cyclists seem forgotten, like the stepchild of motorists. What we all need to remember is that roads were not designed for just cars. We must educate each other to share the roads. We are all looking to get from point A to point B and do it safely. From this, along with members of the community I have established a Cycling Safety Committee where we are looking for ways to educate students at the College to ride their bicycles safely.

I’d like to thank you for taking the time to read this and hope you check back for further information as our conversation continues.

The last time I wrote on here I was talking about Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, and Mariano Rivera as well as my memories of baseball growing up. It is amazing to me that Derek finally hit his 3,000th hit. What amazes me more is that it was a homerun. People joke about his saying that Derek is some kind of perfectionist and I’m not sure they are far off.

This so far has been a hard year to watch baseball in. I am watching the end of an ERA like I said before. Jorge spent some time hitting below the Mendoza line (YUCK!). Life as a DH must not be easy. What still amazes me is how Mariano Rivera just doesn’t seem to ever age. Rivera’s has blown a couple saves this year, sure, but he is still one of if not the sharpest closer in the game.

As much as I know baseball is made just to entertain us (or at least that is how I’ve always seen it before), it is a new reminder that I am growing up. Over are the days of playing in the park, swim listens, camp, and simplicity. It seems the older we get, the more complicate things seem to be getting. I sometimes struggle with the fact that I am 21 and the expectation is for me to be an adult, but have none of the real freedom of an adult. I want to keep moving forward, but also stay behind. It is a strange sort of struggle that I guess is part of the quarter-life crisis (yes, that exists).

I guess what I’m trying to say is I am ready to grow up. I know being an adult (what exactly is that?) isn’t going to be easy, but I have to do it. Come the end of next May, I will walk across the Cistern and either get ready to start a job or graduate school. Both ideas are scary, but also exciting. As much as the idea of growing up is scary to me, the adventures it will bring will certainly reward me.